HISTORY OF THE HALS
By John Trotwood Moore
Now I’m forcibly reminded,When I see them riding there,One moment in the saddleAnd the next one in the air,That the saddest sham in natureThat I ever came acrossIs a hundred-dollar saddleOn a twenty-dollar horse!And again I’m just reminded,When I see their tandem teamsAnd all the traps and trappingsOf their wildest English dreams,That you’re always sure to noticeIn their heavy, rumbling gigs,The homeliest looking womenIn the foreignest-looking rigs!And yet again I notice,With a mild, complacent smile,That th’ eternal laws of fitnessAre at work there all the while.And I grant them due forgiveness,Let them rip it as they be—For they dock their horses’ tailsTo match the owner’s pedigree!
Now I’m forcibly reminded,When I see them riding there,One moment in the saddleAnd the next one in the air,That the saddest sham in natureThat I ever came acrossIs a hundred-dollar saddleOn a twenty-dollar horse!And again I’m just reminded,When I see their tandem teamsAnd all the traps and trappingsOf their wildest English dreams,That you’re always sure to noticeIn their heavy, rumbling gigs,The homeliest looking womenIn the foreignest-looking rigs!And yet again I notice,With a mild, complacent smile,That th’ eternal laws of fitnessAre at work there all the while.And I grant them due forgiveness,Let them rip it as they be—For they dock their horses’ tailsTo match the owner’s pedigree!
Now I’m forcibly reminded,When I see them riding there,One moment in the saddleAnd the next one in the air,That the saddest sham in natureThat I ever came acrossIs a hundred-dollar saddleOn a twenty-dollar horse!
Now I’m forcibly reminded,
When I see them riding there,
One moment in the saddle
And the next one in the air,
That the saddest sham in nature
That I ever came across
Is a hundred-dollar saddle
On a twenty-dollar horse!
And again I’m just reminded,When I see their tandem teamsAnd all the traps and trappingsOf their wildest English dreams,That you’re always sure to noticeIn their heavy, rumbling gigs,The homeliest looking womenIn the foreignest-looking rigs!
And again I’m just reminded,
When I see their tandem teams
And all the traps and trappings
Of their wildest English dreams,
That you’re always sure to notice
In their heavy, rumbling gigs,
The homeliest looking women
In the foreignest-looking rigs!
And yet again I notice,With a mild, complacent smile,That th’ eternal laws of fitnessAre at work there all the while.And I grant them due forgiveness,Let them rip it as they be—For they dock their horses’ tailsTo match the owner’s pedigree!
And yet again I notice,
With a mild, complacent smile,
That th’ eternal laws of fitness
Are at work there all the while.
And I grant them due forgiveness,
Let them rip it as they be—
For they dock their horses’ tails
To match the owner’s pedigree!
The most beautiful of all beautiful rivers—bold-bluffed and crooked, darkening in shadow or shimmering in sunlight, and never yet desecrated by the touch of a wheel of commerce—is the Duck, rising among the foothills to the east and flowing through the blue limestone of this Niagara period, like the Hudson, to the Cumberland. It flows through middle Tennessee and past the town I call my home.
Many are the picturesque spots on its banks. My favorite one is a huge projecting rock, protected by large upright ones nearly as immense, and shooting out over tier upon tier of rocks, down a hundred feet below, to where the river runs like life—now in sunshine, now in shadow. On this rock, sheltered by others which form a kind of background, I love to take the lap-robe from the buggy, spreadit out, stretch out and enjoy the scenery beyond—the valley rolling away, the bend after bend of the river, with the water flashing between the iron bridge that spans from rock to rock, the everlasting hills and the eternal skies.
There is only one thing to mar the beauty of this place. In ten feet of my rock is a neglected grave. The mound is sunken around it, clearly defining the outlines. Even the bluegrass refuses to grow on it, it is so uncanny. I had often wondered whose grave this was, neglected, unkept, forgotten.
“Perhaps,” I said, often to myself, “it is the grave of some Federal soldier, buried far away from home. No doubt he fell in Hood’s raid, when that soldier turned his back on Atlanta and struck out for Tennessee, sweeping everything before him to Nashville. Somewhere in the North there is an unknown grave in a human heart. Or, it is just as apt to be,” I would add, “one of those half-clad, half-fed Johnny Rebs, frozen in that November’s sleet, and thawed out in the withering fire of Franklin. Foot-sore, heart-sore, wounded and sick, he straggled forty miles from Nashville, trying to follow Hood’s forlorn hope back to the Tennessee River, and died here. Poor fellow, whoever he was!”
But not long ago an old darky whom I sometimes saw wandering around in the neglected graveyard near, told me better. It is an old graveyard, now full and neglected. Under a big tree I can see the square tombs of the father and mother, sisters and brothers of James K. Polk.
I say graveyard purposely. Nowadays, it is true, they call it cemetery. Cemetery is Frenchy, from Latin, and I suppose the name has been adopted because it sounds better than the Saxon graveyard. That other Saxon word, God’s Acre, sounds better. As if we could tone down the hideousness of skeleton death with a French cutaway! And I hope you will pardon this digression when I tell you I hate everything American that patterns after French, and I love everything English that clings to Anglo-Saxon. William the Norman was a free booter, a robber and a bully, and for my part I am sorry that old Saxon Harold did not wipe the face of the earth up with him and his parley-vouzing crowd of rakes at Hastings. England has never had a king since that was half the man Alfred was. We should have missed all the mean and villainous Johns and Richards, the devilish Henrys, the profligate Charleses and the pigheaded, blood-pudding and brainless Georges. And I would not allow a foreign grammar of any kind to be taught in our public schools. For is it not ideas which count, and not words? One flag and one language, and the man who tried to pull either of them down I would—well, you have heard the rest. Lord help us! Starving out the most glorious, the most beautiful, the strongest and the grandest language in the world, the language of Chaucer, Milton, Burns and Byron, of Emerson and Carlyle, to teach our children a mongrel mixture that tends to mongrel morals!
But, as I was saying, the old darky told me about a year ago who the lonely occupant of the neglected grave was. “Boss,” he said, as he sat up against the slab that answered for a headboard, “I thou’t eberybody knowed dis grabe was de grabe of de man dat was kicked to deff by a stallion on de public square sixty years dis spring. Dat’s all I knowed about him, an’ dey buried him heah.”
After that I would often find myself thinking of the unknown being who slept there. Did he have a family, and what became of them? What strain of horse could in those days have been so vicious? What stallion kicked him? Stump-the-Dealer? No; Stump was too lazy to kick. Kittrell’s Hal? He was a baby. Could it have been—ah, yes, happy thought! I have it. It was one of those new trotting St. Lawrences, or Messengers, that Major Andrew Polk introduced in the country about that time. The major was showing him off the first Monday on the square; a crowd of rustics gathered around, thinking he was gentle,like our Hals; one got too close to his heels—a flash of a leg—a crash—a bursted skull—a forsaken grave—and the world moves on.
No doubt of it. And the lonely occupant really holds a state record and doesn’t know it: “First man in Tennessee to be kicked to death by a trotter!”
“This thing is getting interesting,” I say to myself, “and I’ll romance on that man a little—make him up a pretty history in my mind.” I draw my lap robe a little further in the sun. How pleasant and delightful it is! How sweet the spring breeze comes from the South, and how the water, from a fisherman’s paddle, sparkles like diamonds far below.
On a sycamore tree that has grown from the river bottom up opposite my bluff, a crow suns himself and eyes me foolishly. I never see a crow but I think of Poe, the weird, wild genius, and his heavenly rhythm. I don’t exactly fancy that bird, and if I were not too lazy I’d throw a pebble at him.
But let me go on with the history of the man who was kicked to death. “Shall I make him young or old?” I asked myself. “Young. Why? Because an old horseman would have had better sense than to get too close to a strange horse’s kicking end.” Again: “Ten to one an old horseman would have had the best horse in the world himself and would have been staying with him, telling everybody so, and proving it by his pedigree, instead of running around examining the hind legs of some other fellow’s worthless beast!
“Why, how nicely it all ravels out,” I laughed. “This reminds me of Conan Doyle. It must be so easy to write a catchy little book, without a line of literary merit in it, in which having the causes all in your own mind, you can reason back so glibly to effect and make it sound so real to thoughtless people. ‘Trilby,’ ‘Sherlock Holmes!’ Lord, where are we at that this kind of stuff can live in the same age with the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ and ‘Lorna Doone’?
“A young horseman,” I continued; “ah, then, there is more of it. Perhaps:
“‘A nearer one still,And a dearer one yetThan all others.’”
“‘A nearer one still,And a dearer one yetThan all others.’”
“‘A nearer one still,And a dearer one yetThan all others.’”
“‘A nearer one still,
And a dearer one yet
Than all others.’”
The crow turned ’round and deliberately winked his left graveyard eye at me. The villain! He knows the human heart. How fine the sunshine feels! “What would I not give,” I said aloud, “to know all that poor fellow’s history!”
The sycamore bowed its limbs; the crow gravely nodded his head. They would like to hear it, too.
A shadow darkened my rock. I glanced up, half frowning at being interrupted just as I was making up such a nice romance—with Poe’s raven helping me, too! A man sat down beside me. I didn’t notice him particularly, because I didn’t want to. I have a nasty habit of refusing to talk when I want to think. I never could do both at the same time. Indeed, I think the working of the lower jaw is fatal to the minds of most men. Besides, this is my rock. This hour is a slice of my time-cake (there are just so many slices in it before Waiter Death calls for the plate), and I have the right to eat it without the help of every loafing glutton who does not know the difference between the husks of idleness and the cake of labor.
Talk about woman’s rights! Let the men get theirs first—the right to call certain hours of their time their own, without bowing, nodding, shaking hands, joking, laughing, lying and talking weather to every loafing acquaintance whom idleness sends along. Oh, Horace of my school days! Oh, great master of satire, how I wish I had remembered what you said to the loafing bore who ran upon you when you sat sweetly dreaming out your work in the garden of Maecenas! How I would feed that sarcasm to this old loafer!
I glanced at this fellow as he sat down. He was gray and grizzled. He wore an old suit of jeans dyed with copperas. On his head was an old wool hat of many, many years ago. Such clothes! I knew none such hadbeen in Tennessee “since the war.” “He came,” I mentally said, “either from Sleepy Hollow or—”
“Hello-o!” said the old chap, provokingly taking the word out of my mouth. I feigned sleep.
“I heard you say,” he went on, “that you would like to know the history of the man who sleeps in that grave yonder.”
“Yes,” I growled, “but I was only romancing. You see, I love to get off here, away from everybody—especially weather wizards and people that know it all” (and I looked sternly at him) “and think about life and the fool things we are and do.”
“I can tell you that man’s history,” he said, without noticing my remarks, “and he knew more about the horses of Tennessee than any man living to-day. He raised Stump-the-Dealer and—”
I sat upright.
“Just reach around under that rock there in the shade, Colonel,” I said; “yes, that’s it—Lincoln County, made in 1877—help yourself. Don’t mind the rock candy, the dried bit of lemon and orange peel and the roasted slice of East Tennessee peach in the bottom. It is all right in spite of the flavor. You see,” I continued, “lying in the early spring on this clammy rock, right over a muddy, half-frozen river, is liable to give one a cold. I don’t touch it often myself—just keep it for my friends and—”
The crow laughed out loud and winked both eyes alternately.
“Never mind,” said the old fellow, drinking it all at a mouthful, to my astonishment and consternation, and tossing the bottle over the bluff, “that’s good. Count me as one of your friends hereafter, won’t you? You see, I haven’t had a drink for sixty years. Been out of the state. Shut up in a dungeon, as it were; been—”
“Oh, you are one of those Tennesseans that migrated to Texas,” I said, laughing. “But go on with your history of the man.”
The old fellow did not laugh. He grimly stroked his long, grizzled beard, and said: “I used to live here—right here in this county. That was sixty years ago. I was a horseman—I knew a good one when I saw him. By the way, I owned the best horse that ever stood on iron. I owned old Stump-the-Dealer.”
“What?” I cried excitedly; “you owned old Stump? Heaven be praised! I’ve been looking for you for years. Tell me all about him!”
“Gently, gently,” he said; “that’s what I want you to tell me. You see I haven’t heard a man say ‘horse’ for sixty years. In fact, you are the only horseman I’ve spoken to for that time. I seem to have lost my head—been in a trance. Tell me what became of old Stump.”
I looked at him in astonishment. “How quickly that Lincoln County acts,” I thought, and then aloud: “Oh, Stump died forty-odd years ago.”
“Dead forty years,” he exclaimed; “and what killed him?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s been so long, but it seems I’ve heard he died trying to pace over a row of salt barrels and not break his gait.”
“And did he do it? Old Stump? Did he break his gait?” he questioned, excitedly.
“No—broke his neck,” I replied.
“Good,” was his verdict. “I knew he’d break his neck before he’d break his gait. Gone at last! Poor Stump! And what became of Major Kittrell’s colt? Hal they call him. I knew him, too.”
“Died years ago,” I said. “Got lost in the woods. Went out in the wilderness to hunt for his pedigree and never came home any more.”
“Well, well, that’s sad,” he muttered. “I swapped a colt to Major Kittrell for a black and measley jack—Simmons’ Jack by Leiper’s Creek. Can you tell me what became of him?”
“Why, yes, I’ve heard of that chap all my life. He took many premiums and died years ago, but he left a numberless progeny.”
“Where are they? I must have one,” he added, “when I start in again.”
“You’ll find them nearly all in the last Congress,” I said, “if it hasn’t adjourned yet.”
The old fellow smiled for the first time. “Now tell me,” he said, “when I left here in 1845 a chestnut gelding named James K. Polk held the world’s pacing record. They rode him a mile in 2:27; was that ever beaten?”
The crow laughed so loud I thought he’d fall off his perch.
“Not till last summer,” I said, with a wink. “A Hal horse called Star Pointer, a great grandson of the Kittrell colt, paced a mile in a little better than two minutes—”
“Look here, young man,” he broke in, “I want the truth! You know no horse ever did that. That’s flying. Who rode him?”
“Why, we don’t ride horses now in harness races. He was driven to a bicycle sulky. A 2-year-old has paced in 2:07¾, and there are more Hals that have paced better than 2:10 than you could count up in an hour.”
“What’s that?” he said, jumping up. “Don’t you know we never break a horse till he’s three? I can’t sit here, young man, and have you tell me them yarns any longer. Sixty years ago I was a horseman. I told yarns, too, and swapped horses and lied, and bragged, and run down other people’s stock, and well—I came to grief. And if you had been where I have been for sixty years you would be more careful what you say. Tell me the truth about some of them.”
“Why, I thought everybody knew them,” I said. “I can’t imagine where you have been. There was the first great Hal racer, Little Brown Jug. His three-heat record of 2:11¾, 2:11¼, 2:12½, was, for nearly ten years, unbeaten.”
“What!” he cried, “done that three times? Who rode him?”
“Why, hang it,” I cried, impatiently, “nobody rode him! I told you they quit that before I was born. And Mattie Hunter and Bonesetter—they were great racers. Mattie Hunter was a little mare that was one of the Big Four. Then there came later old Hal Pointer—the greatest race horse of them all. Why, he had a record of 2:04½ in a race—”
“Nearly two minutes in a race! Phew!” he cried, blowing vigorously through his long, thin, gray whiskers. “Phew! What a lie!” and something flew out of his dry lips and rattled on the rocks.
I jumped back in astonishment.
“Excuse me,” he said, “them’s three of my front teeth—they’ve been dry for sixty years and hanging loose in the jaw bone, like. I forgot myself and blew too hard—”
He caught at his eye just in time and put that back: “But go on, I never heard anything as interestin’ as them Hals.”
But I had forgotten the story, and was watching him. Never had such an uncanny feeling come over me. I reached around under the rock for the bottle.
“I got all of that at first,” he said. “Now, look here—you go right on with that story and don’t you move or something might happen to you.”
I tried to laugh, but the cold sweat stood on my face. I shook, trembling, and looked to see how far it was to the water.
“Go on.” He glared. “Go on, or I’ll throw one of my eyes at you. Tell me the rest.”
“I—ah—ah—oh; well, there was a Brown Hal, the champion sire of his day, and he’s still living. He has more 2:10 race records to the credit of his get than any horse living or dead. Here is his 2:10 list.” I rattled along, trying to brace up and talk fast enough to think of something else except the uncanny thing before me. “Let me see: Star Pointer, Hal Dillard, Star Hal, Hal Chaffin, Elastic Pointer, Hal Braden, New Richmond, Storm, Brown Heels, Laurel and Silver Hal, and he sired the dam of—”
“That’s a damn lie!” he snorted; “no hoss could ’a’ done that!”
“Pardon me, Colonel,” I said, “and if you’ll excuse me a minute I’ll step up town and fetch a little more of that—.”
“Set down,” he said, “and go on with your lies.”
It was over eighty good feet to the water over that bluff, but for a moment I thought I’d try it.
“Look! Look!” he cried, pointing down the Nashville pike, way below us—“what’s that going along there without hosses?”
“That’s a hoss-scarer,” I said, “an automobile—a gas buggy—run without horses. That crowd have run out from Nashville in perhaps about two hours. That blue line of smoke,” I said, “away off yonder is the ten o’clock express. It makes the run in an hour and—”
He jumped up. “I don’t believe any of your hoss lies, your gas-waggin lies nor your express lies!” he cried. “Why, didn’t I see General Jackson when he went to Washington to be inaugurated President of the United States, moving in his own carriage through the country? And Jeems K. Polk, why he lives right yonder,” he said, pointing up the street. “He is my lawyer and was elicted President jes’ the other year, and I saw him take the stage for Nashville. It’s all a lie you’ve made up.”
“I am telling you the truth. But where have you been?” I asked.
He looked at me sorrowfully. “Sixty years ago I was a horseman, telling lies like the rest of you, swapping yarns, bragging, boasting, owning all the fast ones, and having a mortgage on the future speed of the universe. But one day something happened to me; one day, on the square, I got too close to a horse’s heels, trying to show his owner an imaginary curb. He kicked me. I’ve been dead for sixty years. I’m the young man whose history you’ve been so anxious to learn,” he said, with a diabolical grin. “Keep your seat,” he added, as he saw I was edging away. “I haven’t told you that history yet. Don’t be in a hurry.”
The blood froze in my veins. He had blocked my path up and nothing remained but for me to jump over the precipice. I rushed to the edge and was just taking a farewell view of the earth when the report of a gun, almost in my ear, awoke me.
“Sorry to disturb you,” said a small boy, as he lowered a single-barrel gun from a rest he had on my rock, “but I couldn’t help shootin’ that crow in the sycamore there. He was jabbering and acting like he had hydrophobia. Did the old gun sound loud? It liked to kicked me over. I forgot I loaded it yesterday, and loaded it again to-day. My!” and he rubbed his shoulder and whistled through his fingers.
“It didn’t sound too loud for me, Sonny,” I said. “An earthquake would have been welcome then. You just about saved me from jumping over that rock. Take this dollar, get you all the ammunition you want, and kill all the infernal crows you can. And if ever anybody calls here to inquire for me, just tell them I have found another beautiful place out in a hundred-acre field in a deep valley, and five miles from any unknown graves on lonely bluffs,” and I went after a hot lemon punch to bring me back from the weird land I had been in.